Astructure’s influence on tunnelling- induced ground movements D. M. Potts, BSc(Eng), PhD(Cantab), MICE, CEng, and T. I. Addenbrooke, BEng, ACGI, MSc, DIC The influence of tunnelling on buildings has become an important issue. The problem is an interactive one; not only do tunnelling settlements affect existing structures, but existing structures affect tunnel-induced soil movements. In this paper the results of a parametric study of the influence of an existing structure on the ground movements, due to tunnelling are presented. The width of the structure, its bending and axial stiffness, its position relative to the tunnel and the depth of the tunnel are considered. ‘The interaction is shown by reference to commonly-used building damage para- meters, namely deflection ratio and max- imum horizontal strain. By introducing relative stiffness parameters which combine the bending and axial stiffness of the ‘structure with its width and the the soil, design curves are established. These give a guide as to the likely mod- ification to the greenfield settlement trough Introduction ‘The assessment of the influence of tunnelling on buildings and other structures has become an important and costly environmental issue. For example, a large proportion of the petitions against the Jubilee Line Extension in London were settlement-related. There is, therefore, and hhas been for some time, a pressing need for research on the performance of structures subjected to tunnelling-induced settlements. The problem is, however, an interactive one ~ not only do tunnelling settlements affect existing ‘structures, but existing structures affect tunnel ling settlements. 2 Current design practice depends on empirical methods for the prediction of tunnel ling-induced ground movements. The methods are based on historical data from greenfield sites.'” If the effect of ground movements on a surface structure is to be assessed, then the building is assumed to be infinitely flexible, and to follow the greenfield settlement profile. ‘The translations, rotations, strains and defor- mations so predicted are then compared with limiting criteria to estimate the likely damage to the building, * It is felt that this approach, based on a greenfield settlement profile, and making no allowance for the stifiness of the structure, can be improved to account more accurately for urban environments where exi ing surface structures modify the ground ‘movements. 3. The study presented in this paper ad- dresses one aspect of this problem, namely the influence of an existing surface structure on the ground movements due to tunnelling. A series ‘of numerical analyses of tunnel construction in the greenfield scenario, and beneath-surface beams of varying stifiness (representing struc- tures) is used to assess the differences between greenfield ground movements and those modi- fied by the structure. Building damage para meters (deflection ratio and horizontal strain) are considered for the modified ground move- ‘ments with respect to the greenfield values. A unifying framework is then developed to ac- ‘count for the relative soil/structure stiffness when predicting levels of building damage. A design approach is thereby proposed which gives an improved method of assessment of the magnitude of building damage in response to tunnelling-induced ground movements. Parametric study 4. ‘The geometry of the problem under investigation is shown in Fig. 1. The excavated tunnel diameter was fixed at D = 4-146m and the depth from the soil surface to the tunnel axis, Z, was either 20m or 34m These values are typical for 2 London Underground running tunnel. A beam of width, B, resting on the ground surface with its centre at an offset distance, ¢, from the tunnel centreline was used to represent the effect of a surface structure. ‘The main variables considered in the parametric study were the axial and bending stiffness EA ‘and EI (where Eis the Young's modulus, 4 the cross-sectional area and I the second moment of area of the beam) along with the beam width, B, and its eccentricity with respect to the tunnel centreline, e 5. The sol profile was assumed to be London Clay and was represented by a non- linear clastic plastic constitutive model. The model described by Jardine et al.’ was used to represent the nonlinear elastic prevyield beha- Proc. Instn Ci. Engrs Geotech. Eman, 1997, 125, Apr, 109-125 Paper 11048 Written discussion loses 16 June 1997 Manuscript recived 122 November 1995; revised ‘manuscrit accepted 8 May 1996 D. M, Potts Professor of Analstical Soil ‘Mechanics, Department of Civil Engineering. Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London TI, Addenbrocke, Lecturer, Department of Civil Engineering, Imperial College of Science, Technology ‘and Medicine, LondonPOTTS AND ADDENBROOKE 110 viour, and a Mohr-Coulomb yield surface and plastic potential were used to model the plastic behaviour. Appendix 1 gives more details of this ‘model and the values of the input parameters. ‘The initial stress state in the ground was assumed to be controlled by a saturated bull unit weight of 20kN/m}, a hydrostatic pore water pressure profile with a water table located 2m below ground surface and a coefficient of earth pressure at rest, Ky = 15. Only a short- term response was investigated and therefore the soil was assumed to behave undrained. This was modelled in the analysis by assigning a high bulk modulus to the pore water (= 100 times K,, where Ky is the effective bulk modulus of the soil skeleton). 6, The surface beam used to represent an overlying structure was assumed to be elast and its interface with the soil to be rough. For ‘many of the analyses the axial and bending stif ness were varied independently over an extreme range. While this is necessary from an academic point of view so that the extreme limits of behaviour can be investigated, it does: ‘sometimes result in an unrealistic combination of axial and bending stiffness. Additional ana- lyses were therefore performed in which the stiffness values adopted for the beam were based on a single slab or a 1, 3, or Sstorey. structure. The single slab was assumed to be of 150: mm thick concrete having a Young's mod. ulus £ = 23 x 10° kN/m?, the 5-storey structure hhad six of these slabs with a 3.4m vertical spacing, the 3storey structure four slabs, and the I-storey structure two slabs, The calculation of equivalent £, A, and I values of the surface beam in these cases assumed axial straining along each structure's full height to give axial stiffness, and employed the parallel axis theo: rem to define each structure's stifiness against bending about its neutral axis (Appendix 2) ‘This can be considered to be an overestimate of building stiffness, as only a rigidly framed structure would approach such modes of deformation. An alternative assumption is to obiain the bending stiffness by summing the independent EI values for each storey.” This implies that the walls and columns transfer the same deformed shape to each storey. 7. In all cases no vertical loads were applied to the surface beam, therefore the dead and live loading of the structure are not modelled. Such loading is likely to affect both the shear strength and stiffness of the adjacent soil. Although this is a simplification such loading is ly to vary considerably in practice and to have included it as a variable in the present study would have greatly increased the com- plexity of the investigation. 8 To account for the stiffness of both the beam (structure) and the soil the following two measures of relative stiffness are introduced and will be used subsequently when the results poooooogga Odfjoooo qa from the analyses are presented. The relative bending stifiness, p*, and relative axial stiffness, a*, are defined as ~_ EI EA Ei BA where HY is half the width of the beam (= B/2) and B, i a representative sil stifness, The expression for p* is similar to that used by Fraser and Wardle’ and Potts and Bond,® and that for a ig similar to that used by Boseardin and Cording.' It should be noted that for the Present investigation, which involves plane strain conditions, a* becomes dimensionless while p* has dimensions of m-!. The value of , adopted in the present work is the secant stifiness that would be obtained at 0-01% axial stain in a triaxial compression test performed on a sample retrieved from a depth of Z/2. This was chosen as itis a measure that could be obtained from a site investigation.’ For the soil profile used in the present investigation, E, for the tunnels with a depth, Z, of 20m and 34m is 103 MPa and 163 MPa respectively. The value of, increases approximately linearly with Z. 9. The building damage parameters adoy are deflection ratio and horizontal strain." Deflection ratios for both sagging, DRug. and hogging, DRog, are defined, see Fig. 2. a e a Detection ratios: OP, Fig. 1. Problem geometry Fig, 2. Definition of deflection ratiospoint of inflection of the surface settlement trough occurs below the beam then it separates the zones of sagging and hogging. In the analysis this point was determined by interro gating the surface settlement troughs to locate the point at which the rate of change of slope of the trough changed sign. The horizontal strain, 2, is obtained directly from the computer ‘output and is the maximum horizontal strain of the neutral axis of the beam and therefore of the structure the beam represents, By referring the strain to the neutral axis any effects of bending are eliminated 10. When presenting the results from ana Iyses with a surface structure, comparisons will be made with greenfield predictions. It is therefore convenient to define the following modification factors for deflection ratio where ef. and of, are the maximum horizon compressive and tensile strains of the ground surface for that portion of the greenfield settlement trough which lies directly beneath the structure. Finite clement analy 11. The finite element program ICFEP (Im- perial College Finite Element Program) was used to carry out the analyses reported here, A typical finite clement mesh is shown in Fig. 3 For beams with zero eccentricity, advantage was taken of geometric symmetry and consequently only half of the problem was analysed, as was cevident from the mesh shown in Fig. 8. For eccentric beams such symmetry does not exist and the complete problem was analysed. Fight noded plane strain isoparametric elements with. reduced integration were used to represent the soil. Three noded Mindlin beam elements with selected reduced integration were used to ‘model the surface structures." These elements simulate bending, axial and shear behaviour of the beam. Bending behaviour is governed by EI while the axial and shear behaviour by EA. Consequently if £4 is small then both the axial id shear sfifiness will be low. 12, An accelerated modified Newton-Raph- son scheme with a substepping stress point algorithm was employed to solve the norlinear finite element equations." 13. Tunnel excavation was modelled by the incremental removal of the solid elements within the tunnel boundary. That is the stresses that the soil within the tunnel applied to the ‘tunnel boundary were evaluated and then applied in the reverse direction over several increments. During this procedure the soil elements within the tunnel were not included in the analysis. For each increment of the analysis the movements of the tunnel boundary were monitored and used to calculate the volume of ‘STRUCTURE INFLUENCE ON TUNNELLINGINDUCED. GROUND MOVEMENTS co Fig. 3. Typical finite element mesh i lL